We live in San Francisco, while all of our family is in the Mid-West which means at least a yearly cross country trip is in store for our family, plus vacations.  I am on the constant watch for products to make traveling with our 2 year old easier while trying to downsize the amount of gear that we need to bring along. 

There are several blogs out there with great tips and ideas.  I love http://www.flyingwithkids.com/ - this site is full of tips and products to assist with traveling.   I am definately going to use the CARES Aviation Restraint System on our next flight, this way I can check the car seat which will make getting around the terminal so much easier and quicker!  Another great site is http://www.deliciousbaby.com/travel/family-travel-tips/ - lots of great tips for preparing for the trip, getting to and from your destination, and tips like baby proofing your hotel room while on vacation.

I would love to hear about any other sites that offers information for family travel as well as any great suggestions and experiences.

This is #8 of an on going dialog of our travel which includes 5 countries and a 4 year old. Please check the prior archives for the previous sagas

When Olivia was 3 we had stayed in the penthouse of a hotel in Mexico. We climbed into bed, all three of us, and she looked out the window to see Jesus. Not figuratively or a revelation … but a steel one. Not just any Jesus but a giant Jesus with his arms outreached, face looking to the sky and robes flowing on the hill across from the hotel. So giant was this Jesus that he had a blinking red beacon on his head so aircraft would avoid crashing into The Jesus. Olivia opened her eyes wide and said, “Hey Daddy! Who is that boy?” My husband said, “It’s a man and his name is Hey-soos.” (phonetic for Jesus said in Spanish) Days later we were returning home on the airplane and the flight attendant announces on the p.a., “Will Jesus Morales please ring your call button?” My daughter was sitting in the row across the aisle and one row forward from me. She swivels in her seat and looking over her shoulder gives me a thumbs up with a smile and a nod while saying “Heeeey-sooooos.” And thus was the introduction to Jesus for the pagan daughter of two fallen Catholics.

A year later, my husband, my now 4.5-year-old daughter and I were in Saudi Arabia. Naturally, I was emailing home to the States the amazing adventures we were having while my daughter Olivia was first standing on the chair next to me marching in place, then laying across the table behind the laptop, then spinning in circles next to me on the floor while humming Dance of The Sugarplum Fairies, culminating with rock-climbing up the back of my chair and slithering onto my back. While she was there and I was pretending she was not, she looked over my shoulder and saw one of the AOL Latest News pictures. She states matter-of-factly (remember she is 4), “Oh, huh. The Mona Lisa.” For the first time in 15 minutes she found a way to actually get my attention. Freak-of-knowledge usually is the winning hand for her. I stopped emailing (her mission accomplished) and craned my neck to look the monkey on my back in the eye and say, “WHAT? How do you know about the Mona Lisa???” “Little Einsteins”, she replies … again as if to say duhhh. We were soon to leave the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and travel to Paris, France. I said, “Olivia! Did you know the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre? We can go see it in Paris if you want?” She thought that was a more than fabulous idea and that was going to be our plan.

We arrived at the Louvre the first week of January, last year. We quickly looked for a map and found exactly where the Mona Lisa was kept. Getting to it was a tad more difficult. Sidetracked with the humongous art in the amazing Napoleon room, Olivia and I wandered off from Mike and found another room. We walked right into a face-to-face meeting of a huge, dark, scary painting of a dying man. Olivia says, “oh yuck Mom, that is really not a pretty paining! Who is that man?” I replied, “Oh that is Jesus Christ” to which she nodded her head yes while mulling over the notion and said, “ah, right. I’ve heard you say that before.” While I was trying my hardest to quickly determine if I should laugh or not, my husband Mike walks up to us, oblivious to what we were talking about, and calmly looks at the painting and says “Oh look Olivia, Hey-soos!” Olivia then has a manifestation of divine truth and replies “ohhhhhh Hey-SOOS. Why didn’t you say so Mom? I know who that is, we saw him in Mexico with a red light on his head.”

Five stars, two thumbs up and a snap-snap for our neon orange stroller bassinet. It looks like a small hockey duffle and won admiring stares from just about everyone who’s ever traveled with a kid (or a peewee hockey stick). We put our then three month old son – Alastair – in it on the airplane, zipped it up to his neck, and stuffed him under our seat like luggage. Settled at our feet with the vibrations of the plane, he peeped out and grinned when he wasn’t sleeping peacefully from San Francisco to Europe.

The bag carried flowers, Alastair with flowers, dirty laundry, Alastair with dirty laundry, wine and cheese, things we were sneaking through customs, and Duty Free. Thanks to it (and his chic Tea suits), Alastair got lots of extra attention, and we got a bit of extra sleep on the plane.

Hello, my name is Andrew and I am a husband and father of two boys, 7 and 10. My wife and I have been traveling with the boys since they were born. Since my wife was in grade school, she wanted to visit Japan and see Fuji-San, Mt. Fuji. So, when a business trip came up to Tokyo and Beijing recently, I took the whole family. The pictures of the boys in their Yukata robes were taken at a Ryokan in Kyoto. These Japanese B&B’s are extremely warm and friendly places. And, as an alternative to the skyscrapers of Tokyo, they offer a bit of the old Japan that is sorely missing in the big cities. This Ryokan had traditional cedar tubs that are filled, and overflowing, at all times. So, a tub before dinner was a must! The kids loved to learn about foods, the temples and even the architecture. Of course, the big excitement was for the Samurai swordsman!

Our trip continued to Beijing. After a day in China, our ten year old deftly noted, ‘Dad, China is the opposite of Japan’. The calm and contained was replaced with the frenetic and cacophonous. Noodles were replaced with shark fin soup and chicken feet. Clear blue warm skies turned to coal soot and down jackets. And, yet, the newness of the environment was the tread that ran through the trip. No doubt our kids experience was colored by their parents open hearts in Japan — and global concern and fear in China. We ended up leaving Beijing a day early and returning to Japan for a romping day and a half at Tokyo Disneyland. Yes, it looks just like Anaheim. Except instead of sugar everywhere, the Japanese eat rice cakes and bean paste (the Snickers marketing team simply hasn’t cracked the code on Japan!).

The last picture of our family next to an iceberg was taken a few weeks ago in Alaska. Just note: it’s summer — I don’t think I’d like to be in that same spot in November. More on Alaska (and the bear mace we had to carry in the bush) in my next post!

We are confirmed travel addicts.

As a couple, my husband and I traveled as much as possible and now that we have a daughter, we are pleased to announce she is one of us. Although we are troubled by the fact that she will not eat salsa, she indeed loves to travel and so we will, in turn, allow Olivia to remain in the family. Traveling is deeply seeded in her DNA. Okay, that was dramatic. The truth of it is that she thinks everyone does it and it is normal everyday life. We have had only one mild passive-aggressive objection from her and it was on her 1st birthday celebrated on the big island of Hawaii. She took her first steps there, which we thought was especially magical as her namesake is Hawaiian. However, during that week of her birthday (we celebrate “birthday weeks” at our house) we continued traveling and she continued walking in Hawaii, then California and then Chicago. This is when she went on strike and didn’t walk again for 2 weeks. We got the message, three states in one week is too much to ask of a one year old.

There are so many travel tricks that we have used over the years to make the air portion of our travel smooth. As she gets another year older we have to come up with new solutions for cohesive travel. We started her traveling as an infant using the obvious trick of breast-feeding on take-off and landing. Bottle, boob or pacifier is essential to make sure you do not have the screaming baby in row 4 that rows 5, 6 and 7 wished was not there. Seems obvious but I have witnessed many-a-parent traveling with their child screaming in pain upon the landing. The baby has to swallow to break the building pressure in the ear canal upon take-off and decent thereby keeping baby free from pain and allowing the parents to smile an elitist smile when all members of row 5 state “that is the best baby I have ever seen.” We flew today from San Francisco to San Diego and a box of soy milk with a straw and carrots were on the no-ear-pain menu now that she is 5. Although Olivia’s Berkeley/hippie pediatrician states I can breast feed until she is 6, I opt for carrots at this point.

There have been a multitude of travel secrets between her infancy and 5 years old. Some I am afraid to mention or should I say that I am too embarrassed to mention. Two of such involve the airplane bathroom. Our current all-important travel secret is… podcasts. Olivia has a Nano iPod filled with podcasts. While she prefers the podcasts I download which contain video, I have also loaded it up with stories sans video. Everything from French lessons to Sesame Street. We used to travel with the portable DVD player, which was both heavy and bulky. It was always running out of battery life but worse yet, her movie would be mid-point and she would hear the instructions to turn it of by the invisible pilot. Very frustrating for her. Podcasts are great for short flights with short humans with short attention spans. Great for driving around Saudi Arabia too but that is an entirely different story.

Prior to having a child, my husband and I traveled all over the world. We live in San Francisco and we love to travel the globe. We have been told, time after time, once we have children our travel days will be over. Heeding this information, we traveled to Indonesia prior starting a family. We chose Indonesia because it seemed to be the farthest possible place for us to travel to. It was our theory to travel to the most distant possible place because after starting a family it would never happen again. After all, that is what EVERYONE was telling us.

EVERYONE was wrong.

December of 2007 our daughter was 41/2 years old and we found ourselves in Saudi Arabia. We were wrong about travel on two accounts. One: travel is definitely not impeded by children and two: Indonesia is NOT the farthest place from San Francisco. Saudi Arabia is!

We feel our success with traveling as a family is from just that….traveling. It is so second nature for our daughter that there is never an issue. At the age of 4, Olivia had been to 5 countries. Multiple prior domestic trips also helped. I urge all brand new families to start traveling with their babies right away. No reason to wait. There are many tricks for being en route but the biggest secret to success is to start them at a young age.